Wednesday, March 23, 2011

DIY easy, gorgeous, and cheap green decor



Happy Wednesday folks,

           This week is flying by! Hopefully you are getting to see some Spring weather in your area. It's stunning here today but then it's supposed to rain, rain, and rain. I've decided to skip the gym and get in a good run instead!

Okay now onto some decor DIY. I love watching shows where they take simple, everyday items and make  beautiful decor pieces out of them. I visit craftgawker and dwellinggawker often as they have amazing ideas that you can complete on a dime.  Lately I've been seeing a lot of terrarium and sedum rock garden ideas and knew I wanted to try making one. With $20 I was able to buy 5 plants (each with multiple plants themselves that I split apart), decortive rocks, and a couple vases. I went to my local garden center and picked up some easy maintenance, rock garden approved, and low watering plants.

These included:

Sedums
Hen and chicks (a commercial name for a variety of Sedum)
ferns( needs a little more water than the sedums)
Black Clover
Cacti
Pilea

Here is what I ended up with......














Fun, hey?

Okay so how can you do this at home. SIMPLE!

1. Gather a bunch of glass vases or bowls, making sure they are clean. I bought a purple plastic bowl for $1 to see how it would work. You can see it in the 7th picture. It works great!

2. Pick out your plants. Any sedum or hen and chick variety would work great. These produce shallow roots and need little soil to work with. My local nursery has a section for rock garden plants which is where I picked up most of pretties I used above. I am trying a fern species to see how it works in this environment and I'm sure it will work fine, your soil will just need to be a bit deeper.

3. Gather some rocks. I picked through my garden beds and found some large rocks to line the bottom  of the container. You could use decorative rock here if you wanted.

4. Add in some potting soil, cactus soil, or use the soil the plants came with. I used the soil that the plants came in and used some of my garden bed soil if I needed to add more to cover the roots. Some websites recommend activated charcoal if your terrarium is going to be closed in order to prevent it from smelling.

5. Add in the plant(s) and cover with decorative stuff like the colored rocks I used or you could go with moss (see picture #4). You can buy moss but I live on the West Coast so I don't need to go very far to find it. ***cough*** my yard ***cough***.

6. Enjoy! These make a fabulous gift or just place around your house or office for a fun living piece of decor.

Have you even made your own pieces of decor? I'm planning on making some wall art soon with either fabric or paint. It's a lot of fun and makes your house look fab!! The best part is you don't have to spend your whole paycheck to get that stylish look. Cha-Ching!!!

Have a great day everyone!!

7 comments:

Nikki said...

I love it! Sooo cute, and maybe some plants that I can actually keep alive :)

Nelly said...

i'm not good with stuff, i'm better off just buying plants that have already been planted...haha...i'm so bad with decor that i had to hire someone to do it for my wedding!!!! i'm such a nerd.

love your creative ways...and your love for nature...

=)

evergreen said...

Hi Melissa! This is a wonderful idea...they look so beautiful :)

HiHoRosie said...

Love the little planters! I should've done this instead of buying a cactus for my office desk. ha ha!

Melissa said...

Hey Nikki - Yes, these are pretty fool proof! Hope you make them:)

Hey Nelly - I've got to start with the basic decor and creative stuff because it takes me longer to get a vision. I totally agree that hiring something that has that vision is good thing for people like us lol!


Hey Evergreen - Hello girl!!! So nice to see you around again:) thanks for the comment love!!

Hey Heidi- I love cactus!!! Now you can add some succulents to another planter and there you go:)

Get Skinny, Go Vegan. said...

What beautiful photos!

kelli said...

wow, those are awesome! great photos too!!!